


all the little horses

by kittu9



Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Storytelling, after the end, happy-enough endings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-29
Updated: 2011-11-29
Packaged: 2017-10-26 15:59:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittu9/pseuds/kittu9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a love song, with feathers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the little horses

 

In the months following Mytho and Rue’s departure, Fakir becomes a storyteller of the truest kind: everywhere he looks, he discovers small happenings that he is compelled to record, lest they be forgotten by the world at large—he is caught off guard by his desire that these stories should be awarded with respect, or even just an existence.

(He does not write down what he himself thinks, ever; Fakir is still, in essence, a very private person.)

*

Some days his fingers itch (all day long and through the night as well) with the desire to write more of Ahiru-as-she-was, her sweet eyes and her skinny, uncoordinated body; her very naïve determination and her low, funny voice. He keeps himself away from paper and ink at times like these, instead spending all of those hours in the practice room, performing with aggressive horror—one emphatic grand jeté after another, cabrioles, changement de pieds, terre-a-terré and tour en l’air.

At last, when some of the fear goes out him, he assumes the proper position and executes a solitary pas de deux, in honor of Ahiru (he would not do this for anyone else. A danseur looks ridiculous performing a solitary pas de deux because of the role he plays, which is support). This is the only dance that he performs slowly, adagio: a love song with feathers.

He loves Ahiru. He does not love himself.

He will never write of her fate again, he says to Aotoa (but he reminds his own self of this vow much more often. It is very much like his dancing, the way he writes: once he has begun he cannot stop).

*

Fakir is a creature of long memory and regret. Ahiru may be unequivocally a duck, but she is a duck who loves him.

(This is what Raetzel says to him when she visits. That was a beautiful day, he remembers: Ahiru quacked joyfully for hours, and though he could not understand her, he found it in himself to laugh.)

*

Every day, she forgets a little more. Fakir fights back the desire to curse and weep and somehow manages to tell her, with at least some of his usual fond gruffness, that she’s an idiot; they ought to practice the basics more often.

*

He will be loyal even after he dies, he knows. He watches as Ahiru assumes a very undignified fourth position and quacks at him to check her form.

“Turn out a little more,” he says. “And fix your wing, you moron, you’re all bent over.”

She quacks at him again, a little dolefully perhaps, but she does as he says. The look on her small face is full of light.

*

Like Fakir, she’s getting older. Her plumage has transformed from its familiar chick-yellow to a pale ivory color that is almost white. Her eyes still regard him with an intensity that he tells himself is very human. As long as she remembers him (and he hopes that she remembers _him,_ not the bread that he always carries in his pockets), Fakir lets himself make-believe that this, this is all right.

 


End file.
